Following the fantastic results for the U.S. video game industry in July, both Nintendo and Sony Computer Entertainment America have provided their take on their platforms' respective performances for the month.
Nintendo needless to say couldn't be happier, as the Wii and DS completely dominated. Alluding to the recent PS3 price cut, Nintendo said that its "momentum pays no heed to industry pricing shifts."
The company said that the Wii, which sold 425,000 units for the month, "achieved its highest weekly sales rates since December, despite pricing shifts in the industry." Moreover, Nintendo boasted that its Wii and DS hardware outsold all other platforms combined.
Other factoids from Nintendo: Nintendo remained the top U.S. game publisher for the sixth consecutive month; So far this year, Nintendo titles claim six of the industry's top 10 best sellers, including the top three: Pokemon Diamond (overall No. 1) and Pokemon Pearl (No. 3) for Nintendo DS, and Wii Play (No. 2) for Wii; Wii has added new titles (averaging nine per month since launch) at a faster rate than any other new home system.
As for Sony, on the official PlayStation.blog Mariam Sughayer, analyst relations manager for SCEA, noted that Sony was "really anticipating a good reaction" to the PS3 price cut. "...we were obviously very pleased to see that PS3 sales increased with 159K units sold at retail for the month of July, which puts us up 61% over June numbers," she said.
"While I think a lot of that had to do with the new price, I also think there is a great deal of anticipation for the line up of games just around the corner, including Warhawk (Aug. 28), Lair (Sept. 4) and Heavenly Sword (Sept. 12)," Sughayer continued. "In fact, September should definitely be a big month for us when you add in the launch of the new slimmer, lighter PSP which will hit store shelves next month."
While it's a definite improvement for Sony and the PS3, SCEA failed to comment on the fact that their console still did not edge out the Xbox 360, despite the fact that Microsoft's console was burdened with the warranty news. With only 170K units sold, it's clear that the Xbox 360 was affected by the warranty issue. That said, Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter commented, "Xbox 360 demand was far stronger than we expected this month," and he expects sales to pick up in August now that the warranty news is in the rearview mirror.
GameDaily BIZ contacted Microsoft for comment on its July performance, but the company has not provided any statement as of this writing.
[UPDATE] Microsoft has finally issued its own statement on the Xbox 360's performance in July. The company noted that the Xbox 360 outsold PS3 for the 9th month in a row, despite the PS3 "price drop." [Note: MS did indeed put quote marks around price drop.]
Microsoft also was very happy to see that the Xbox 360 had the #1 title for the month of July with NCAA Football 08 from EA, which sold more than the PS2 and PS3 versions combined. In addition, customer spending on Xbox 360 is 2:1 to PS3 and Wii, according to MS, and Xbox 360 software sales increased 24 percent year-over-year.
Microsoft took the credit for the industry's tremendous growth in July. "Xbox 360 continues to drive the growth and success of the video game industry, with Xbox 360 customers again spending more this month on the Xbox experience than on any other next-generation console. Largely in part to this next-generation success, the video game industry has seen 37 percent growth year over year," the company stated.
by James Brightman
source:gamedaily.com
